State's youth prison system violates inmates' rights, experts say

Tribune illustration

Tribune illustration

Steve Schmadeke, Chicago Tribune reporter

Illinois' youth prison system is violating the constitutional rights of inmates by failing to provide adequate mental health care and education and by unnecessarily keeping youths in solitary confinement, three court-appointed experts found this week.

The experts found that there were too few mental health and security staff in the state's prisons for juveniles, that some youths were being confined for 22 hours a day and that the education programs were "grossly inadequate." In addition, the entire juvenile justice department doesn't have a single psychiatrist specializing in children or adolescents on staff, they said.

Dr. Louis Kraus, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center, found in his report on mental health services that the understaffing problems in the prison system meant youths were "spending excessive amounts of time in their cells" instead of in classes or getting treatment.

Kraus also noted problems with mental health intake, including the "potentially dangerous" prison practice of mixing youngsters age 13 or 14 with inmates who were 20 or 21. He also found that some severely mentally ill inmates were being misclassified as needing less help.

"It seemed that youth are identified more in regards to the staffing the IDJJ had, and how frequently the youth could be seen, than what the youth's mental health needs actually were," he wrote.

The experts also found that living conditions in the prisons' confinement units were "often harsh and of substandard quality," with rooms that smelled of trash and feces. Youths were required to wear orange jumpsuits with no undergarments, wrote Barry Krisberg, a senior fellow at the University of California at Berkeley law school. One Chicago youth reported that he also lacked eating utensils while on the segregation unit, forcing him to use pieces of Styrofoam to eat some meals.

Educational programs also were lacking, the experts found.

"Most students do not receive services to which they are entitled under federal and state laws and regulations," Peter Leone, a University of Maryland professor, wrote in his report. He also said the state board of education should evaluate the special education program in the youth prisons because it appeared to violate state and federal law.

A state spokesman said the expert opinions were being reviewed.

A separate report scheduled to be released Thursday by the John Howard Association found serious problems at the Kewanee youth prison, which houses mentally ill youths and those charged with sex crimes.

The prison watchdog group said staffing levels at the Kewanee prison are so low — the prison is authorized to have 17 mental health workers on staff but had 10 during a visit — that John Howard has asked circuit court judges to stop committing boys with mental health needs to the juvenile justice department.

That prison has also seen an influx this year of inmates from the maximum-security prison for youths in Joliet that closed in February, the association found. Most of them are being held for parole violations.

"The real screwed-up thing here is that these are kids that are most needy and ... they're not able to adequately staff it," said John Maki, the association's executive director, who said the system did not need to concentrate its most difficult inmates in one prison.

The state will have 30 days to come up with a plan to correct the problems highlighted by the three experts. Once an agreement is reached, the plan needs to win the approval of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly.